Limping through life

I got to work today and the cat that sits out back, and has been there for years, was limping. She was barely putting any weight down on her rear leg and at times would mostly just hop on three to get where she was going. I petted her and tried to inspect for obvious injuries. She mewed when I massaged her ankle letting me know that this was indeed a tender spot, though, she did not bite me.

I didn’t want her to go limping through life as I enjoy her presence out back in the smoking area very much. She’s a wonderful comfort and peace giver as me and some of the guys spend time petting her and talking to her. Cats have always held a special place in my heart. So, I looked up means in which to help alleviate her pain and to my shock discovered that most human pain pills are not well tolerated by cats and can in fact be deadly to them. This makes cats so much more interesting than dogs (but that’s just my personal opinion).

Obviously, I was at a loss for what to do for her. However, I discovered a site that advertised a kind of Velcro splint for cats and thought that might be a good idea– though probably quite irritating for her. The cost was a measly (and I say that sarcastically) $50 plus shipping, etc. I pondered the concept, but I had to be off to class, so I wished her well and went back in to work. Later when I came out, her limp was less pronounced and she seemed to be getting along just fine.

How quick we are to want to put a band-aid on an injury, reduce the pain, crutch the problem! I thought I would be helping her, but in truth she needed to go through her own healing process. Had I enabled her to escape the pain, she would not have rested like she needed to, had I splinted her leg, she might have learned to depend on the splint and lost the strength she needed to get through this on her own. We are not unlike the cat.

Mothers are particularly guilty of this. We want to bind up our children and dose them with exorbitant gifts and vacations as a means of bringing temporary smiles to their limping faces and hearts. My children are a prime example, as we struggle through this divorce and I see the pain inflicted from the other side, I want to make them feel safe and secure, free of harm, to give them that place of rest. But, sometimes they have to face their own injuries and allow God to heal them as He sees fit. That’s a hard pill to swallow when we want to just “fix” it for them.

This is where trusting in the Lord comes into play. There are injuries that people sustain for the simple fact that God wants them to lean on Him, not us. We can’t get in the way of His healing or His timing. We just have to pray, faithfully, that they remain in His ever-loving, ever restorative hands. And, sometimes they will have to limp through life as a reminder of the things they have overcome and who those trials have created them to be. Jacob did.